The Saint Returns

Handsome Carlos Guevara Moreno, who took a degree in biology at the Sorbonne in the early '30s, likes to say that he "abandoned the scientific laboratory of biology for the human laboratory of politics." Sixteen months ago, Politico Guevara, a former cabinet minister, tried to come to power by arms. His revolution began at dawn in Guayaquil, Ecuador's second city (pop. 216,000) and major seaport. It ended with his humiliating arrest a couple of hours later by the army officers he thought would join him. By 4 p.m. the same day, he was in the massive old jail in Quito, Ecuador's capital, 290 miles away. Last July, after Guevara had served a year, President Galo Plaza Lasso got Congress to pardon and free him.

Plaza's clemency did not win over Guevara. With his comely young wife Norma, who had twice tried unsuccessfully to help her husband break out of jail, Guevara resumed publishing a lurid weekly called Momenta, and banged away at Galo Plaza. Guevara's old party, the ragtag Concentration of Popular Forces, rallied to

Momenta's call, nominated Guevara for mayor of Guayaquil and made his wife honorary president of the party. Last week Guevara overwhelmingly copped the election, with Plaza's candidate out of sight in third place.

Guevara Moreno appeals to Ecuador's 60-c--a-day rice-mill laborers, the inflation-struck white-collar class, the rank & file of the army and the wretched unemployed living in the split-bamboo shacks hidden behind Guayaquil's impressive masonry waterfront buildings. Plaza's tolerant democracy, though it provides the free press and elections Guevara needs, is not enough for Guevara, who preaches: "We have in this country a minority in a magnificent situation and a majority in a desperate situation. And Plaza's government, it's for the minority, no?" He calls his followers indefensos, "the defenseless ones." They call him "the saint." The indefensos took it as a good omen that Guevara's electoral triumph last week occurred on the day he became 40, minimum age to run for the presidency in next June's election.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.